Elemental Shaman Talents Guide

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The Class talent tree has received a small rework that mostly makes it easier to traverse in order to pick up more utility without losing throughput or defensives.

Defensive Talents

Astral Shift - Our staple defensive spell that can be further improved with either Planes Traveler or Astral Bulwark. Planes Traveler is the default choice since most of the time 40% damage reduction is enough to survive most things.

Stone Bulwark Totem - A welcome new addition that serves as a second personal defensive spell providing a large absorb shield that will let us have more agency over our own survivability.

Earth Elemental - Still providing the 15% health increase for the duration. It’s not the most powerful defensive, but worth using, especially when combined with Primordial Bond. It loses some value when Primal Elementalist is taken since you’re limited to a single elemental at a time with that talent.

Earth Shield - This is a very efficient amount of healing for an instant cast and I’d recommend using it whenever you have nothing better to cast while moving or during downtime. Should also be cast on yourself and another dps player before a boss fight with Elemental Orbit.

Brimming With Life, Elemental Warding & Nature’s Guardian - Passive increases to survivability that should always be taken.

Throughput Talents

Spiritwalker’s Grace - The most important talent for damage in the class tree. Casting while moving is a massive benefit and having Evokers in your raid that can provide Time Spiral for extra casts is a game changer. Should always be improved with Graceful Spirit.

Gust of Wind - Burst movement is always handy and can save you in a pinch, this is the default choice.

Spirit Walk - The alternative to Gust of Wind is less universally useful but has the ability to remove all movement impairing effects that can help negate certain mechanics that slows or roots.

Enhanced Imbues - Makes your Improved Flametongue Weapon provide more Fire damage and Thunderstrike Ward to deal more damage.

Nature’s Swiftness - Grants an instant cast once a minute. Vary minor gain but mandatory when playing as Farseer thanks to Ancestral Swiftness.

Fire and Ice & Nature’s Fury - Self explanatory damage increases.

Totemic Focus & Totemic Surge - These are only really throughput increases when paired with a build that plays Liquid Magma Totem.

Utility Talents

It’s not possible to allocate all of these talents at the same time, pick and choose depending on what’s needed for the encounter or dungeon.

Wind Shear - The most universally useful and powerful interrupt in the game.

Capacitor Totem - Great AoE stun that can be improved with Static Charge to cast it more often or Guardian’s Cudgel to get a second stun right after with shorter duration.

Earthgrab Totem - An AoE root with a fairly short duration is rather niche.

Tremor Totem - Even more niche and rarely sees use.

Purge - Lets you remove any nasty buff the enemies apply to themselves, this ability is usually either entirely useless or incredibly powerful.

Cleanse Spirit - In a similar vein this is often useless but being able to remove curses is a great tool to have since it’s not that many classes that can do so.

Wind Rush Totem - Movement speed for the entire raid is always good to have, Jet Stream brings it closer to the power of Druid’s Stampeding Roar and can have it remove snares.

Thunderstorm - Specifically paired with Thundershock is a great tool for dungeons, serving as an AoE interrupt without sending mobs flying in all directions.

Poison Cleansing Totem - The rate at which this dispels debuffs is unparalleled and should always be taken when there’s any poison debuffs.

Totemic Recall - Useful to reset the cooldown of various totems like Wind Rush Totem or Poison Cleansing Totem. Can not be used to reset the cooldown of Stone Bulwark Totem as it has a base cooldown of three minutes.

The Elemental talent tree has seen a large rework that allows for more flexible pathing and choices. It’s no longer as bottlenecked by how many of the powerful talents were locked behind having 20 points already allocated.

Elemental Blast - Now a choice talent with Earth Shock at the very top of the tree. It still provides the buffs to Crit, Haste and Mastery.

Fire Elemental & Storm Elemental - Storm Elemental has received changes that makes it more universally useful, providing general haste rather than cast speed for Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. It gives 4% haste per stack, up to 4.

Surge of Power & Aftershock - These remain as a choice talent with Surge of Power losing some of its appeal in single target situations since the additional overloads from Lightning Bolt now deal significantly less damage thanks to the Mastery (Mastery: Elemental Overload) change.

Icefury - Now a proc from casting Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Tempest or Chain Lightning. It transform your Frost Shock button into Icefury. Casting Icefury is now instant and grants you a stack of a buff that increases the damage of Frost Shock by 200%.

Fusion of Elements - After casting Icefury you need to cast both a Nature and Fire spell in order to trigger a free Elemental Blast that still gives you one of its buffs. Certain spells count as both Fire and Nature, like Flame Shock, Primordial Wave and Elemental Blast itself.

Echo Chamber - 40% increased Overload damage means Overloads now deal 35% of original, compared to 25%. This is multiplicative with the new Ascendance, which means overloads do 87.5% of the original damage during Ascendance. Overload casts come from Mastery: Elemental Overload.

Stormkeeper - An iconic Elemental ability that interacts very well with Ascendance in AoE where the majority of its power comes from the overloads. Additional charge from Stormbringers Rolling Thunder lets you sometimes be able to cast three massive Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolts in quick succession.

Ascendance - Elementals big cooldown has finally seen a rework that removes the boring gameplay of only spamming Lava Burst for the entire duration. Now it instead provides 150% increased overload damage as well as making spells that overload do so an additional time. This is incredibly powerful and is now one of the strongest abilities in the game, changing Elemental from a spec with a rather flat damage profile into one with tons of burst potential.

Deeply Rooted Elements - Random Ascendance procs are still a thing but now have a chance to happen while spending maelstrom rather than casting Lava Burst. This increases the value of Aftershock significantly.

Primordial Wave - A talent that remains a staple in almost every build thanks to the large amount of haste through Splintered Elements.

Liquid Magma Totem - The best tool of setting up a lot of Flame Shocks fast in order to get the full benefit from the Primordial Wave and Splintered Elements synergy. With only a 24 seconds cooldown when taking Totemic Surge this should be available to set you up for every pack in dungeons.

Mountain Will Fall - This talent has taken a large hit in effectiveness with the reduced damage of Overloads. Overloaded Maelstrom spenders now only deal an underwhelming 17.5% of the cast's damage, assuming Echo Chamber is taken, this is offset somewhat by Ascendance bringing the damage back up to respectable levels.

Echoes of the Great Sundering - Is a much more viable option now that it only requires a single point to get the full effect and gives us the playstyle of alternating our Maelstrom spenders in AoE.

Primal Elementalist - A talent that makes your elementals into actual pets that you have control over. An 80% damage increase might sound like a lot but they are incredibly weak by themselves and makes this a rather underwhelming talent.

After the changes in 11.0.5 Stormbringer is the dominant choice with farseer trailing only slightly behind in single target but really falls of a cliff in AoE.

Farseer

Call of the Ancestors - Spawns a ghost that casts Lava Burst or Chain Lightning depending on what you cast while it exists.

Routine Communication - 5% chance to get an ancestor from Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Icefury or Frost Shock.

Heed My Call - 4 second increase means they last 67% longer and will cast far more Lava Bursts before expiring.

Final Calling - Makes the Ancestor cast an Elemental Blast when they expire.

Ancient Fellowship - Thanks to Final Calling and Offering from Beyond this should on average be better than Latent Wisdom but will have bigger variance.

Offering From Beyond - Even more cooldown reduction for Fire Elemental or Storm Elemental.

Ancestral Swiftness - Should be used on cooldown to get as many Ancestors as possible.

Stormbringer

Tempest - A supercharged Lightning Bolt that deals AoE damage around the target. It can Overload from mastery and from Surge of Power or Power of the Maelstrom. You get one cast of this every 300 Maelstrom spent or from Awakening Storms.

Arc Discharge - An instant cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning with increased damage. It doesn’t interact with Stormkeeper which takes priority over this effect.

Rolling Thunder - A bonus Stormkeeper charge every 50 seconds. It’s possible to be at 3 stacks of Stormkeeper if this overlaps with a Stormkeeper cast in any way.

Conductive Energy - Makes Tempest not only apply Lightning Rod but also have 10% of its damage dealt to all targets also be dealt to targets with Lightning Rod.